Portland State University professor Nate Young asked me to join him on Jan. 19 for a guest lecture to students in his Strategic Craft Beverage and Marketing class. About half of the students we’ll be speaking to are from the Pacific Northwest, with the rest scattered throughout the U.S. and the rest of the world. While many of the students want to add their own brewery to the more than 4,100 that now exist in the United States — including more than 60 in Portland alone — others are looking for ideas about how to get cideries and distilleries off the ground and tell them what aspects they can handle on their own and where they’ll need help.

I acknowledge up front that I’ve never worked in a brewery, never worked on a brewery’s business side, never worked in public relations and never pitched a brewery, distillery or cidery to an outside party before. Young was more interested in the pitches I receive and the profiles I’d written, noting that the students might like to hear what I find interesting in the brewers I write about and what the future of craft-beer marketing looks like from my perspective.

After seeing thousands of folks just like these students descend on Portland last year for the Craft Brewers Conference with their business plans, hardware shopping lists and syllabus of industry talks and lectures, I realized that people entering this already crowded field are seeking any help they can get. To that end, I’ll waive the $699 course fee and share the “agenda” for my session. I’d recommend aspiring brewers take the following six points to heart when pitching their life’s work, and would suggest established brewers give them a look just to see if they require updating:

1. Compelling narrative: You and your friend founding a brewery because you didn’t want to work at a desk anymore isn’t exactly a unique fable. Great stories like Yakima, Wash.-based Bale Breaker’s owners opening a brewery in their family’s hop field, the Pfriem family setting up a legacy brewery — Pfriem Family Brewing of Hood River, Ore. — for their son who’s named after a Belgian brewing town, Jim Koch’s “kettle in the kitchen” and the family legacy story behind Samuel Adams ... all of that lends authenticity to your brewery and gives both writers and readers something to latch on to besides the beer. It’s this element that lends your brewery its personality and sets it apart from others. “We picked up our brewmaster on ProBrewer” isn’t a great story. “Our brewmaster apprenticed at Schneider-Weisse and now helps us make our signature Triple-Hopped Weizenbock” certainly is.

2. Innovation: Dale Katechis canning his beer in 2002 just to get folks to his Oskar Blues brewpub in Lyons. Georgetown Brewing in Seattle distributing only in kegs to cut costs. Georgetown’s neighbors at Fremont Brewing taking the Costco approach by front-loading employee pay and benefits. Deschutes Brewing’s Karl Ockert pushing for one-way kegs. Your back story is great, but craft beer drinkers also want to know what you’re adding to the equation.

3. Local ties: In recent years, Rogue Ales has excelled in latching itself to nearly every bit of Oregon iconography it can get its hands on. Its old Brutal Bitter recipe became PDX Carpet Ale. It makes beers for Pendleton wool and Voodoo Doughnut. It’s also not alone in taking this approach, looking at Dogfish’s partnership with Pennsylvania’s Woolrich, or Flying Dog and Old Bay seasoning, Narragansett and Del’s and Autocrat. Widmer Brothers and the Portland Timbers, Boulevard and the Royals. Sewing yourself into the fiber of the community not only builds equity, but it enhances your narrative.

4. The beer: You can fudge it with the rest, but you’ll only succeed in the long term if the beer is up to snuff. Mikkeller and Evil Twin could get by on their “Danish gypsy brewer” shtick for a while, but if their collaborations with AleSmith, Stone, Crooked Stave and others didn’t stack up, they wouldn’t merit the attention. Hopworks and its brewmaster, Christian Ettinger, can slap their certified organic labels on their colorful cans, wave their B Corp certification around and play up their organic sourcing and artwork, but if they didn’t push for bolder beers and do their B-Side collaborations with brewers like New Belgium, they’d be in the same boat as recently folded Wolaver’s. You have to keep your beers not only good, but relevant, and playing nicely with similarly talented brewers tends to help.

5. Adaptation: This could also be called “what would A-B buy?” Anheuser-Busch InBev NV
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has bought brewers like Elysian, Goose Island, Breckenridge, Blue Point and Four Peaks for their back story and brand equity, but also because those beers managed to stay relevant within their communities and became emblematic of the regions they served. However, A-B also bought 10 Barrel and Golden Road because they rode rising trends in IPA and gose consumption to critical acclaim and rapidly expanding sales. In each case, A-B’s acquisitions embodied most of the four elements we listed above, but adapted their offerings and strategy to remain relevant while remaining true to the quality of their product. If you’ve been in the game a while and your business is stagnating beyond your back story, it might be time to make some tweaks. If you’re just starting out and building your narrative, make sure you’re pushing your beer’s boundaries, maintaining its quality and making nice with your neighbors.

6. Giving nothing away: You may look at glassware, bottle openers and stickers and see cool branding opportunities, but it’s honestly just overhead that’s going to end up in a Goodwill or recycling bin. Craft beer history is dotted with brewers who set up their logo, pint glasses, tap handles and fonts long before they decided what they were going to brew — if they even had an answer beyond “an IPA.” Craft beer loves to tout how many breweries have opened within the past two years, but 62 breweries closed in 2013 and 2014, more than in the previous three years combined. You’re going to need as much cash on hand as you can get in those first few years. A foam koozie or hefeweizen glass — or even free samples — won’t get folks to notice your brewery. Inviting someone down for a tasting or pointing them to your table at a festival, however, certainly might.

Jason Notte is a freelance writer based in Portland, Ore. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Huffington Post and Esquire. Notte received a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University in 1998. Follow him on Twitter @Notteham.

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